What happened during the Little Ice Age in the Ming Dynasty?
In the seventeenth year of Chongzhen in the Ming Dynasty (1644), King Chuang Li Zicheng led his army to invade. Emperor Chongzhen hanged himself in Meishan, north of the Forbidden City, in despair. The Ming Dynasty came to the end of history. There are many theories about the reasons for the demise of the Ming Dynasty. One of the more mainstream views is that the last years of the Ming Dynasty happened to encounter the "Little Ice Age" in the climate, which resulted in insufficient food supply and farmers could not fill their stomachs, so they were forced to revolt. , eventually overthrowing the Ming Dynasty. So is this really the case? What exactly was the Little Ice Age all about? Let me read history books tonight and talk to you about the Little Ice Age in the Ming Dynasty?
The Little Ice Age, as the name suggests, refers to a period when the temperature is colder than normal years. As abnormal weather causes a significant reduction in food production, which in turn triggers social unrest, these causal relationships seem quite reasonable. However, Ming history enthusiasts often claim that the Little Ice Age of the Ming Dynasty is actually not correct, because this Little Ice Age spanned from the early Yuan Dynasty to the Kangxi period of the Qing Dynasty, lasting more than 400 years.
Scientists found through carbon isotope testing in glaciers on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau that the glaciers began to advance around 1270 (the Yuan Dynasty was founded in 1271), which means that the Little Ice Age began at this time point. The lowest point of the first cooling phase occurred around 1370 (the Ming Dynasty was founded in 1368), and the temperature rebounded slightly over the next century. Around 1470, global temperatures became cold again, and some places that had rarely snowed began to snow continuously. The extremely cold weather lasted until 1715 (the fifty-fourth year of Kangxi reign of the Qing Dynasty) before it came to an end. During this period, the coldest phase occurred between 1650 and 1700, half a century after the fall of the Ming Dynasty.
According to some records in the official history and local chronicles of the Ming Dynasty. In the fourth year of Jingtai (1453), there was heavy snowfall in winter. In April of the following year, the Ministry of Household Affairs reported that there were no frozen deaths in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River. Among them, more than a thousand people froze to death in Changshu County on the south bank of the Yangtze River alone. In the winter of the 13th year of Chenghua (1477), there was a severe cold and the canal was frozen several feet thick, interrupting transportation in the south of the Yangtze River for several months. In the sixth year of Wanli (1578), many lakes in the Yangtze River Delta were frozen, and the cold wind rolled up the ice on the lakes and sent it up to 10-meter-high hills.
Readers who are familiar with the history of the Ming Dynasty may know that the Ming Dynasty was in a stage of steady development, whether in the Jingtai period or the Chenghua period, and the sixth year of Wanli was the golden period of "Wanli Zhongxing". Since the extreme cold weather did not have such a great impact on the Jingtai, Chenghua, and Wanli dynasties, should the Little Ice Age be blamed for the collapse of the Chongzhen dynasty? This is obviously a bit unjustifiable.
Judging from the above time points, the rise of the Yuan, Ming and Qing Dynasties were basically in the relatively cold stage of the Little Ice Age. There seems to be a strong causal relationship between the two. However, after understanding the weather conditions at this stage in detail, the answer is not the same.
In fact, the main problems faced by the Ming Dynasty in the late Ming Dynasty were from three aspects: first, land annexation caused a large number of farmers to lose their livelihoods, and had to take desperate measures to fight against the imperial court; second, fighting on two fronts depleted the country Without the financial resources, the imperial court had no choice but to tax more, and the increased tax burden led to more and more peasant uprisings. Thirdly, the incompetence of the ruling class led to a complete deterioration of the situation. In the final stage of this huge empire, it was completely out of touch. It is actually a miracle that it survived until 1644. Compared with these three reasons, the Little Ice Age was only a small influencing factor, so it is obviously too far-fetched to let it take the blame for the demise of the Ming Dynasty.